Does this not mean a constant economic strengthening of the NEPmen and a constant weakening of the state?

Answer. I am afraid that your second question too is posed from an almost "economist" standpoint in the sense indicated above. Bastiat, it seems, held almost seriously to the opinion that "the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by robbery." He was not very concerned with that "economic" question of where exactly it came from—that which these persons living by robbery obtained?

You "have the impression that in Russia at present buying and selling and exchange are highly profitable," "whereas production is possible only in the rarest of cases."

I was very much surprised upon reading such a conclusion drawn from observations of the Moscow streets. But what then, I thought, is to be made of millions and millions of Russian peasants? That they are sowing the land is, apparently, not a rare case and not the rarest case, but the predominant one in Russia? A case "even" more numerous than any "buying and selling" of anything whatsoever by a "NEPman"? And probably,

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